CEOs of big companies get the biggest raises in 3 years – LA Times

The typical big-company chief executive raked in $11.5 million last year in salary, stock and other compensation, according to a study by executive data firm Equilar for the Associated Press. That’s an 8.5% raise from a year earlier, the biggest in three years.The bump reflects how well stocks have done under these CEOs’ watch. Boards of directors increasingly require that CEOs push their stock price higher to collect their maximum possible payout, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index returned 12% last year.

Over the last five years, median CEO pay in the survey has jumped 19.6%, not accounting for inflation. That’s nearly double the 10.9% rise in the typical weekly paycheck for full-time employees across the country.

The top-paid CEO last year was Thomas Rutledge of Charter Communications Inc., at $98 million. The vast majority of that came from stock and option awards included as part of a new five-year employment agreement, and Charter’s stock will need to more than double for Rutledge to collect the full amount.

No. 2 on the compensation list last year was Leslie Moonves of CBS Corp., who earned $68.6 million.

No. 3 was Walt Disney’s Robert Iger, who made $41 million….CEO pay did fall for one group of companies last year: those where investors complained the loudest about executive pay. Compensation dropped for nine of the 10 companies scoring the lowest on “Say on Pay” votes, where shareholders give thumbs up or down on top executives’ earnings.

At Exelon, for example, the majority of voting shares were against how much executives made in 2015, particularly when the stock lost 22% that year. After the vote, Exelon made several changes, including capping how much executives can receive in incentive payments if the stock loses money over the year.

Auto supplier BorgWarner had last year’s second-lowest passing rate in the survey on “Say on Pay,” with 60% of voting shares saying no or abstaining. The company made changes to its compensation program and cut a 2016 incentive award by $2.4 million to $950,000 for CEO James Verrier. His total compensation dropped 29% to $12.3 million last year.